You know… I’m more than thankful and grateful for all the resources we have these days at our fingertips, but the more I dive in to one technique/discipline vs another philosophy I realize most of the players we idolize around here more or less developed and got great by perfecting what worked best/most natural for them. That’s not to say we shouldn’t analyze our heroes and document technique for useage or pure academic reasons, but for me anyways I’m starting to “let go” of some of my “anger” issues when it comes to obsessing over how I play something vs how someone else does and is it right/wrong/better… Again, I’m glad I went through the process of educating myself on all that’s been taught and explained here, but I won’t be banging my head against the wall anymore!!!
NOW, where’s my darn camera mount TROY??!!! 
I hear you, but the problem is when there is no particular “way that works for you” or is “natural for you”. I spent six years not knowing what is natural. Then another ten thinking the one way I had discovered was the only way. Then another ten thinking there were two ways. And so on. The more we dig, the more stuff we learn is “natural”, if only you know how to do it.
The number of people who come to us having spent years with a stringhopping motion, not being able to play faster than 110 beats per minute, it’s scary. I rank “play the way that works for you” up there with “just practice” as some of the worst advice in the history of guitar teaching, in terms of its vagueness and misleading nature. Although I should probably rank it the best since it keeps us in business.
Re: Magnets, it’s all up to the factory. They can’t figure out how to do the rubber parts. They’ll be back in the office in a week and be trying again. We’ll send another update to this effect.
I think this point, and perhaps some of the others as well, draw attention to a disconnect many students experience between what they think they need to learn (and therefore ask to learn), versus what their goal is.
I think the underlying general question people typically really mean to ask when they ask about “alternate picked scales” is: “how can I play fast picking licks in the style of guys like Yngwie and Paul Gilbert?”
I think one of the big eye-openers is understanding that even though many of the licks people want to learn are built on 3-note-per string scale shapes, the licks themselves are very often not three notes per string. And in particular, I think that when people hear Yngwie 6-note-per-string licks, they think of them as “3-note-per-string”. I really think the easiest path to scratching the “shred” itch for most people is understanding that a great many of the things they think of as 3-note-per-string are actually 6-note-per-string. That, combined with a basic understanding of single-escape picking, is probably 90% of the battle for most “intermediate” students who just “never got” alternate picking.
I spent a lot of time on Justin’s site in the past. Forging a connection there is an exciting development for CTC, for sure. It also revives a question I’ve included in other threads…
A lot (I’d guess most) of the players at that site, at least when they first show up there, are pretty new to guitar. With that in mind, is it worth also talking about the left hand - viz. how you burn in a fretting pattern…? (Worth it for Justin I mean?)
Obviously, you can’t pick faster than your left hand can fret, and the processes for gaining dexterity seem to be quite different for each hand. I can already trem pick way faster than I can fret, which I would think is pretty common.
(Having so much great info on what to do with the right hand, while being in the dark about developing the left, has been a big source of frustration for me. I’m betting for a lot of Justin’s crowd it will be the same.)
You summarize it so well. Thanks again Troy!
You know, I was wondering about method 5 with the helper motion the other day, and I realized I don’t fully understand how it works without the infamous “garage spikes” issue occurring.
Let me explain.
Say you play with a downward slant (DWPS) and an upstroke escape (USX) motion primarily, where the path of motion is perpendicular to the pick. For the sake of numbers, let’s say the pick is slanted exactly 45° from neutral. Now let’s say you want to add wrist extension to “help” achieve the required downstroke escape on runs ending in downstrokes.
By itself, this seems fine albeit a bit awkward: you’ll end up almost dragging the pick against the string during that final downstroke since the direction of motion is no longer perpendicular to the pick, but that’s manageable.
Here’s my problem: What happens on the following upstroke? Your pick is in the air, your pick is slanted downward at a 45° slant, and you need to do an upstroke. How is that doable in a strictly linear path without the pick getting jammed underneath the target string? Or is the solution to not use a linear path, and use some other motion like rotation to handle it?
Related to this, I recently found a post from @adamprzezdziecki where he manages to do a fast DSX motion with a supinated wrist, which is an even more extreme version of where this problem arises. How is he doing the upstroke without his pick getting stuck? Is it just the pick angle?
I guess it’s like this: pronated DSX - slant takes care of smoothnes (trigger grip + pronation will most likely give you upward slant autmatically), supinated DSX - edge picking takes care of smoothness. I know you are referring to my own technique but to be honest I’m not sure how some elements of it work.
If I had 3 arms, I’d give one for an USX picking motion like Eric Johnson’s instead of being able to play 3nps scales on mid speed.
Something I’d like to add from my own experience. For USX guys - economy picking when ascending, using fingerings that facilitate upstroke changes when descending, mixing 4 and 2nps. DSX - reverse, alternate picking ascending, economy descending.
3 notes on the first string, 4 nps by position shifts on every other string and 3nps descending using economy.
Of course you can purely alternate pick scales in any direction by mixing 2/4nps (starting with 1nps/3nps if DSX).
This is the problem. When you look at players like Andy Wood that play this way, he has no or very little pickslant. He is a downstroke escape player, which is where you see this most commonly. The most common method for downstroke escape uses a supinated arm position, like Andy and Al Di Meola, where there is very often no appearance of pickslant.
We cover shallow escape with little / no pickslant here:
…and here:
Great playing, as always!
I intentionally left out any approaches involving even numbered fretting, economy, legato, hybrid etc. There are of course a world of ways to play scales. But the point here was to address the way that playing 3nps fingerings with alternate picking is seen as almost “mandatory” even though paradoxically lots of great players don’t or can’t do it. And more broadly, how one goes about learning complex physical skills for which the correct motions are non-obvious, even to the player doing them.
Ok, I misunderstood. I guess that ascending scale from the first vid could fall into this category, it still uses 3nps fingerings (halfstep-whole step/whole step-whole step/whole step-halfstep) just with a position shift. Are these ways supposed to be stationary and move only in vertical plane?
@adamprzezdziecki From the way I understood it, once you position shift for that 4th note, you’re breaking away from “true” 3 notes per string (I’m assuming the intent is to stay in the same position as much as possible).
I knew a guy that used to do those high up on the neck (scales with 4 notes per string) because the narrower fret spacing allowed him to stay in the same position, but that’s totally dependent on your finger flexibility / length and obviously only works way up there.
Not a problem, always happy to look at examples of your awesome playing. Your 2:00 wrist motion is among the best examples of that I think we’ve seen on here.
Sorry for the confusion here. What I was getting at in the post is the “problem” of mixing downstroke string changes and upstroke string changes inside of an alternate picked phrase. That’s what Justin was asking about, since he likes to teach scale shapes to beginners so they can learn the fretboard. I wasn’t really thinking about anything beyond that, as far as what fingerings someone would use. However, yes, Justin mainly teaches single-position fingerings, presumbly for simplicity of memorization.
But mainly I was just thinking about the complexity of the mechanical solutions that we have seen in filming experts doing this supposedly beginner-level task. Which of course is not beginner-level at all but a rather sophisticated technical challenge with equally sophisticated solutions. Exactly how one learns to do something like this, especially when the player themselves might not be conscious of the motions they’re learning, is one of the big questions in instrument technique learning.
Wow I’m always in awe of your great playing. Your attack is so amazing! It has such a satisfactory confidence to it.
Every time a frustrated adult guitar player burns a picture of their old guitar teacher, a cracking the code membership is born
Wait, isn’t Andy Wood’s natural position pronated? I mean, based on the videos in that link you posted it looks slightly pronated, although pretty close to neutral, but maybe my sense of “neutral” is off. If that’s not pronated, then what is? If he pronated his wrist much further, the lower strings would get in the way of his thumb, particular if he’s playing on the B or high e strings. Are you only able to pronate when playing the lower strings ala Brendon Small’s elbow technique?
Also, wouldn’t a supinated position be more ideal for upstroke escape?
Anyway, it of course makes sense that using a shallower pickslant alleviates this problem, I was just hoping there was something I had missed.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure a helper motion is even compatible with my technique since I use wrist flexion on the downstroke and wrist extension on the upstroke to get the upstroke escape happening. I can’t even turn it off now, which kind of sucks since I can’t do DSX at all anymore, even though it was my main technique for years.
I think the textbook wrist-based pronated DSX is Molly Tuttle’s pronated form, leaning the thumb side of the heel of the hand against the bridge.
Andy makes the 2:00 wrist motion as his default. This wrist motion will escape from any arm position except the most supinated ones. Both he and Al switch between having both palm heels anchored, to having only the pinky heel anchored. The 2:00 wrist motion will escape from either of those positions.
Andy is never really pronated, where the pinky heel is lifted off the strings with an air gap beneath it like Molly Tuttle. But again, it doesn’t really matter what the arm position is. If you’re making a 2:00 wrist motion it will escape with any of these arm positions, except a Van Halen style arm position.
If you want to get both escapes from the same arm position, with minimal forearm wiggle, you need at least some supination of the arm relative to the strings so that the upstroke will escape (3:00 motion) and the downstroke will escape (2:00 motion). So you can’t use a Molly style arm position for that if these are your wrist motions. You would need to use Molly’s wrist motions which are 3:00 and 4:00.